Brainfood is a monthly all-agency lunch conducted by Fallon Planners. Wide-ranging topics explore trends, business issues, and actionable opportunities for our brands.

Last month's presentation: Design For All
Fallon strategic planners Aki Spicer and Alyson Heller explore the 360° influence that modern design has on the experience of our brands.

Rohit Bhargava strikes again with this compilation of 25 basic styles of blogging including tips on how often to use each and potential to create buzz and blog traffic by using each.

Deadlines for AAAA Jay Chiat Planner Awards submissions approaching fast (Apr14). Application deets here and on Facebook

For those who haven't seen it yet, Heather LeFevre has posted results from the 2008 Planner Survey.
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I am presenting the keynote at tomorrows' Communicator's Forum at University of Minnesota.

The theme of the conference is "The Matrix," or Communicating in a Web 2.0 World

Here are some teaser excerpts from the upcoming presentation:

Fallon strategic planner Avin Narasimhan presents the latest helping of Brainfood, giving us his perspective on the meteoric rise of China and what it could mean for us (as a global business, as advertisers, as...people).

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Fallon strategic planners Aki Spicer (Aki Octagon) and Avin Narasimhan (Desi Stoneage) have come back from the future to offer their POV about Virtuality and it’s implications for brands.

One of the hottest debates in marketing circles today is the viability of virtual worlds like Second Life. What are they? What do people do there? Why? What’s in it for me—if anything? We’ve seen companies flooding these worlds, and some are finding it difficult to translate their virtual world presence into real world gains.

10 Things Marketers Should Know About Social Networking.

On March 26th, 2008, Aki Spicer, strategic planner at Fallon Worldwide, conducted a presentation about social media, using social media, live, across a mashup of social web touchpoints including Fallon Planning Blog on Blogger, Yahoo! Live, NetVibes, Plannersphere on Ning, and Facebook. View the accompanying slides at Slideshare or download the pdf directly to your desktop at Dropio.

A live event/webcast presentation about social media, using social media!

Wednesday March 26, 12pm CST/1pm EST/10am PST, in person (for Fallon employees) or on the social web (for everyone else).

It's not usual to hear the same tune being played in an MGM cartoon and in a Warner effort so I thought it would have been fun to devote a post about it.
Here's a scene you all know, from "Fast and Furry-Ous" (1949)[this same tune is used in a great number of Coyotes/Road Runner shorts though]

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and here two clips from "Barney Bear's Polar Pest" (1944)

Two clips, one from "Woody meets Davy Crewcut" and the other from "Boogie Woogie Man", included in one of the DVD sets of the year!

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Current TV's amusing commentary on the state of social networks.

In the last days I've highlighted what I judge some of the best moments from Terrytoons, but there are several reasons why Terry Studio was considered a B one.
The animation was nothing worth of note, with exceptions being the works of Tytla, Vinci and Tyer. The sound effects (I consider them one of the most important elements in a cartoon) were of the lowest quality one can imagine(no matter if a character falls from the top of a mountain right into a lake or from a diving board into a pool: you'll always hear that same darn "splash"), musical score was rarely good (the posts I've made show some very good exceptions).
There's more but the main reason to classify Terry as a B Studio was the reuse of animation (and even soundtrack). So you can see the very same sequence originally made for a 30s cartoon reused even in the 50s (!!).

Judge for yourselves with what I consider a good example.

Catnip Capers (1940)

The very gag that "killed them all in Naples" and got the greatest reaction in one of my screenings!

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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

Enjoy this rarely seen WW2 effort by Bob Clampett.
The highlights are the marvellous sequences animated by Scribner.

Wacky Blackouts
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Best,
Duck Dodgers

We'll have to wait till the end of the year or maybe even 2009 to have this on DVD, so enjoy a great copy of it. One of the best Popeye entries in my opinion, and one of the best shorts made at Famous.

Cartoons Ain't Human
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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

Maybe I'm just crazy about cartoons wolves....

"The Wolf's Pardon" is really one of the best shorts Terry ever produced. Again the influence of WB and MGM Avery cartoons is more than evident, the plot is clever and everything seems to work excellently.

Do you have the same opinions about it? Ah, yes, first ya gotta watch it.....

The Wolf's Pardon
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And now, waddayasay, fellas?

Nothing of particular interest in this 1940 effort, except for.....??

The Homeless Flea
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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

Here's a delightful Huey short, one of his best entries ever.
No particular reason to post this, but it makes the first page of my blog look more PC.

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See youse,

Andrea

One of the most celebrated work of Tytla during his Terry days was the animation of the fight betwen Mighty Mouse and the demon cat in "The Green Line". Enjoy it.

Green Line
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See ya around,
Duck Dodgers

Guess the only way to explain this penny-pinching is just the line "Well, it's Terry".
I would figure that someone producing his first Technicolor would have run inside the Studio yelling "Let's do it grand, kids!" not economizing on such a detail.

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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

Try to find what kind of relation to our beloved world of classic animation there's in this Harold Lloyd clip (Thad, give them a chance to guess). Next wednesday I'll give you the answer if you cannot come out with it.

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Best,

Andrea

Holy crap! I'm on seesmic and I have NOTHING to say!

I like all Buzzy entries, but this really rocks, expecially for the end: best variation of the piano teeth as real teeth gag ever!

Awful Tooth
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Best,

Andrea

For those of you who might have missed all the fisticuffs and tomfoolery from last night's Red Sox-Rays game, here is the complete brawl between Coco Crisp and James Shields, as many of his Rays buddies jump in and wail on a pinned Coco as he lies on the ground.

And here's the dugout "disagreement" between Manny Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis. Nobody's talking about it, so make of it what you will.

Here I present you, courtesy of Leviathan and The G Man, a great print of one of the best Little Lulu cartoons, "Snap Happy". It includes some wild takes and cartoony violence that were not common in other Lulu entries.

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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

Here's a nice entry by the short-lived team of directors made by Michael Lah and Preston Blair. It's a good cartoon, Disney-like with soft gags, surely more inspired by Tom and Jerry cartoons by Hanna-Barbera than Avery's efforts.
The "mysterious stranger" sequence is a great mixture of animation, musica and sound effects and reminds a similar bit in "Mickey's Parrot".
Let me know what you think about it.

P.S.: Sorry for the TV logo. That's the best copy I could find.

BB and the Bean
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Best,
Duck Dodgers

Here's a nice Captain and the Kids entry. Kind of Disney-like entertaiment that makes you smile but not laugh. The short takes too time building complex gags that do not deliver real fun (the whole sequence with the ventilator, including the ending gag. Really makes you smile for how elaborate the whole concept was, but is this indeed funny?).
By the way, there's a sequence very similar to one later used in "Swing Shift Cinderella" (not sure if we can talk of reused animation by Avery's unit).

CK
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See ya,
Duck Dodgers